1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for calibrating color of an image, such as a color photograph, in transmission of a digital image between a pair of computer image processing systems A, B.
2. Description of the Related Art
Along with the advances made in computer image processing and the advances made in digital data communications, it has become possible to send digital images from one location to another in a very short time regardless of the distance. In particular, the recent advances in Internet communications have made possible the convenient transmission and reception of digital images. These activities are now entering even our daily lives. Specifically, digital images are being transmitted through Internet communication systems from large numbers of unspecified points of transmission to organizations having specific specialized image processing (including value judging, image correction and processing, and printing) systems and are being processed to order in the specific specialized image processing systems. Further, specialized businesses having a plurality of computer image processing systems are using a combination of these systems for streamlining their work.
Such modern systems for transmission and reception of digital images, however, have only just been put together. The fact is that there are still problems which remain to be solved. One of the problems is the mismatch of the color of the image transmitted between a pair of computer image processing systems (brightness, contrast, chroma, and color balance, hereinafter referred to simply as “color”).
In general, to read an image into a computer as digital data, the image is either read through a scanner or the image is captured by a digital camera and that digital data of the image recorded in the camera is read by connecting the camera to the computer. Whatever the case, it is impossible to avoid the reading function of the reading apparatus having an effect on the color of the image. Therefore, it is only natural that the color of the image read by the reading apparatus may not match the color of the digital image displayed on the monitor of the computer. Of course, further reading errors of color data are unavoidable in different reading apparatuses and are unique to each apparatus.
The extent of the color mismatch due to such unavoidable reasons is fixed within each system, so the problem becomes more complex between reading apparatuses in a pair of systems. On top of this, in the case of unspecified large numbers of systems, it may be said with no exaggeration that this problem has to be solved or else no further spread of image transmission systems can be expected.